


Several Slaps in the Face, and Smiles

by rainaftersnowplease



Series: Several Slaps in the Face, and Smiles [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:44:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainaftersnowplease/pseuds/rainaftersnowplease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slightly AU retelling of ME1, beginning from Shepard's birth. The rating will change with later chapters, but for now it's pretty tame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. μεράκι

μεράκι (meraki): [Greek] to do something with care, creativity, or love; to put something of yourself into your work

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Staff Lieutenant Hannah Shepard gave birth in 2154, it was aboard the SSV Einstein (“No child of mine is gonna be born under the damn sky and not in it.”). Jane Shepard remained aboard the dreadnought for nearly three years, but at the outbreak of the First Contact War, the ship was deployed to engage the turian fleet near Relay 314, and the Lieutenant LT, as the crew aboard the Einstein called the fiery little girl, was shipped to the Alliance Academy in London, UK on Earth.

The Einstein would be part of Admiral Drescher’s counteroffensive against the turian hierarchy at Shanxi, during which SLT Shepard was meritoriously promoted to Lieutenant Commander. She sent her gold Staff Lieutenant oak leafs to her daughter at the Academy, with the words “these are for you one day.”

It was no surprise when Jane Shepard opted to commission into the Alliance Navy as soon as she turned 18.

During basic training, Shepard was singled out by her training command for exceptional leadership potential and warrior skills. Her series commander recommended she be designated N0 Special Forces trainee upon her graduation from training. The designation earned her a meritorious promotion to First Lieutenant on graduation day. Hannah Shepard pinned the silver bar on her epaulets.

\------------------------------------------------------

Vila Militar was an old base. Shepard knew that, both because the facility was on Earth, where space was at a premium, and because, even blindfolded as she and the other N0 trainees were, she recognized the shift in texture when the bus transferred from asphalt to gravel and again to dirt.

The bag over her head made it difficult to breath, the moisture in the air and in her breath becoming trapped in the thick burlap cocoon and stagnating there to steam-cook her. Sweat trickled down both sides of her face in slick rivulets, streaming down her neck and staining the collar of her thick dress uniform shirt. The climate was part of training here, her boot camp series commander, an N7 Special Operations Commander, had told her. They were wearing their thick dress blues for a reason. The cadre wanted them to sweat. Lack of food and water, uncomfortable conditions, and sleep deprivation were infamous cornerstones of Alliance Special Operations training.

She focused on keeping her shoulders square, the vertebrae in her back burning in protest to being kept erect for the past four hours. In her head, she counted the footsteps of the liaison officer who paced back and forth in the aisle to be sure none of the candidates had lost consciousness. It wasn’t uncommon. Some candidates came from colonies on frigid, wintery planets or were used to the dry chill of space stations. The humidity of Rio de Janeiro was sometimes the first facet of N-School to claim casualties. Passing out on the bus earned a candidate their return ticket home.

Shepard had to admit, even if only to herself, that sitting perfectly erect in a long-sleeved, woolen dress uniform with a burlap sack over her head, for four hours, in what had to be over ninety percent humidity, was sapping the resolution from the edges of her vision. Her mother had been stationed on at a few temperate posts, but most of her childhood had been spent in space, aboard the Einstein. The back of her throat seemed perpetually dry, no matter how many dusty swallows she forced into it. Dehydration would be a major concern here.

Finally, mercifully, the bus slowed to a halt. It was ancient, like she assumed the base was as well. Air brakes hissed angrily beneath them. The doors folded open squeakily, the sound followed by the clomp of boots on the metal stairs.

“Sacks off, candidates,” a raspy voice ordered. Thirty candidates removed their burlap headgear in unison. Shepard kept her eyes squarely focused on the shaved head of the candidate in front of her, trying not to squint too much. The sun was painful after the darkness of the sack.

“Listen up,” the voice, she found with a surreptitious glance to her right, belonged to a middle-aged Operations Chief in old-style digital camouflage. “You are now aboard Alliance Interplanetary Combatives Academy, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is not boot camp, for those of you fresh out, and this is not the fleet, for those of you coming off deployment rotation. You will be addressed as ‘candidate’ and you will address each member of my cadre as ‘N7’. They have earned that title. You have not. When I tell you to, you will get off my bus and assemble quickly and quietly into formation outside. Any questions?”

Silence rang throughout the bus.

“Get off my damn bus.”

 

They stood in formation for another three hours, at attention, in the sweltering sun. The cadre lingered nearby in the shade of a square popup umbrella made of camouflage netting. They talked amongst themselves quietly, and they watched.

Twenty minutes into the formation, the class suffered its first heat casualty. A pale, skinny Marine from the 10th Mountain Division crumpled at the knees. Two of the cadre rushed to help him into the shade and administer emergency medical attention. He came to a few seconds later, confused and, when the instructors told him what happened, crestfallen. Shepard tried not to think about what that must be like – to be selected for initial training and then falling out because of a bit of humidity on the first day. She clenched her fists, one after the other, digging her blunt nails into her palms. The little pains kept her mind sharp against the billowing, lazy heat.

They’d lose more than that first Marine if the cadre didn’t let them have some water fairly quickly. The bus ride had taken four hours. In this kind of heat, it wasn’t a matter of _if_ they would start to dehydrate, but _when_.

Two more Marines, three sailors, and four soldiers succumbed to the heat before the Chief stepped in to address the platoon again. They were down ten candidates, and the first day wasn’t half over.

“I get it, candidates,” the Chief said. “You’re tired. You’re hot. You’re dehydrated. You’re standing in your dress blues and brass, in hundred percent humidity, in the middle of tropical assfuck nowhere. So here’s what I’ll tell you: if you’re here for a red stripe, or a patch on that uniform you’ve got on, just go buy one. We don’t need you. But if you’re here because you want to be part of a brotherhood, and do things most people can’t do, then you better start puttin’ out now. There’s a month of this, candidates. And it only gets worse from here. Anyone wants to back out now, there’s no shame in it.”

Shepard’s brow furrowed. No one would be dropping voluntarily out of a formation like this. They were all top-notch candidates, recruited as much for their aggressive personalities and thirst for achievement as they were for leadership or combat skills. Some might drop tonight, when they were alone with their own suffering and no one was around or awake to see them quit. But not now. Not in front of this crowd. Ten servicemen and women had already accepted heat stroke before asking for reprieve.

The Chief caught her look of disbelief, his eyes searching her face. Shepard maintained a disciplined lack of eye contact, but she could have sworn that when the old dog walked back into the shade, he was smiling. The idea made her stomach turn. Best not to get singled out here. The course would be difficult enough without being afforded additional attention by the cadre.

\------------------------------------------------------

Being noticed by the cadre was soon her only concern. The first week of evaluation involved mostly physical training. Up at 0300, two mile forced march into the forest with loaded packs, then group PT until noon. A makeshift MRE of protein paste and crackers split between their four-man fireteams, and then march the two miles back to base.

Everything was timed. Falling too far behind the column on the marches to and from base, failing to keep cadence or not putting out enough during training evolutions, or even taking too long to puke put a candidate at risk for being dropped from the course. By the second day, nine more candidates had dropped or been pulled from the course. Shepard had no time to consider the dropouts. They went through the same training evolutions every day, but they were brutal.

First after reaching the jungle clearing that signaled the end of their march was rolling. Taken from the old United States’ records for the evaluations of their Army’s Special Forces, the main focus of this exercise was to disorient and confuse. An hour of rolling back and forth across the pit had Shepard’s stomach roiling, threatening to bring her meager breakfast up for a return appearance. Sometime around the forty-five minute mark, the nausea got the best of her, and she stumbled drunkenly out of the pit to puke orange mush on the grass around its edge.

“There’s another!” the Gunnery Chief overseeing the evolution was positively gleeful. “You wanna quit, candidate? You quit now, you don’t have to pick up that trash you just spilled on my deck. Somethin’ to think about.”

And for a moment, it really was. Special Forces left no trace. That meant no orange froth on the deck after she went back to the pit. She hesitated.

“What are you doing, candidate!?” another of the cadre jumped on her indecision. “Why are you sitting over here staring at your puke? Everyone’s doing the evolution but you!”

Shepard unfroze. She scooped the frothy, sticky vomit from the ground and stuffed as much of it as possible into her right thigh pocket. It was so watery, she felt fluid seeping through the fabric and down her leg almost immediately. The layer of grime coating her skin after six days without a shower served as a sluice for it, shunting it immediately down into her sock and boot below. She ignored the squishy feeling in her sock at every hurried step back to the pit.

Vomit would not be what sent her packing.


	2. Orwell and King

"Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."  
George Orwell

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anita Goyle did not trust Donnel Udina. He had the long, smarmy face of a rat, and though she tried not to let that color her assessment of her successor, his mannerisms enforced the rodent equivalency.

Not to mention the man had no concept of tact.

“David Anderson is a valuable human asset for the Alliance military and for this office,” she reiterated to the new ambassador for what felt like the hundredth time. “And making an example of him before the council would advance our position with exactly none of its members.”

“We look like fools in front of the Spectres and the council, letting him return to the Alliance fleet without so much as a pay cut. Are we so desperate for officers that we allow failures and embarrassments to continue to work within our ranks?”

Goyle crossed her arms and set her teeth before continuing as calmly as she was able, “Our strength doesn’t just lie in what the council thinks of us, Donnel. You would do well to remember what Lieutenant Anderson has done for the Alliance during his service in the fleet. The report of a single turian Spectre with a known bias against humans should not be enough to erase that career of excellence.”

She kept the rest of her opinion to herself: that Anderson probably made a mistake trusting the turian with so much of the mission, and that, if she had been more versed in intergalactic politics, she would not have asked the council to include Anderson on that mission. She had known of Saren’s anti-human politics and chose to request a place in his mission for Anderson anyway.

It was one of the reasons she had to teach this new weasel how to do her job.

Udina sniffed shortly, drawing his nose into a dissatisfied wrinkle and pursing his lips. Anita Goyle was not a woman prone to violence, but for Donnel Udina she might make an exception. The man radiated pretention. She found herself imagining how that upturned nose would look, permanently smashed upward into his skull.

“If nothing’s to be done about Anderson at the moment, let’s move on,” he gruffed after a few moments. “Tell me about my colleagues.”

Goyle couldn’t help surrendering to the small tug his words hooked into the corners of her mouth. _Colleagues_ with the council he was not. Goyle had made the mistake of thinking the Council was a benevolent, caring governing body. The truth was, they were closer in motivation to any human government, looking out for their own species individually before the galaxy as a whole.

And humanity was a relative unknown with every reason, after the First Contact War especially, to be hostile towards those species.

“All right,” Goyle said. She keyed in a command to her Omnitool and a projection of the salarian councilor projected between herself and Udina. “This is Councilor Valern, the salarian representative.”

Valern was an oddity, a rare male salarian afforded political power. His eyes were set farther apart than most salarians Goyle had come across in her tenure on the Citadel, and she knew it bothered him.

“They don’t allow their men political power?” Udina asked, his voice seeming to tumble down his nose like his airs.

Goyle shook her head, “It’s not that they aren’t allowed, but salarian society is matrilineal. Valern is the first male salarian councilor in history, I believe. He’s an anomaly. He also doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. It’s possible he was appointed because he tends to be more cooperative than most salarians.”

“Aliens seem to be universally uncooperative,” Udina retorted. Goyle sighed.

“They aren’t a homogenous group,” she felt her patience ebb a bit into anger. “It’s a mistake to think of them that way. Salarians value calculation and preparedness. Turians consider swift and decisive action as the most commonly effective reaction to unknown situations. That’s probably why they attacked the Relay 314 party. The asari are more patient than the other two. They live longer, and they’ve been here the longest, so they can afford to be.”

“All of them oppose humanity’s interests in the galaxy,” he rounded on her, pointing a long finger through the holo of Councilor Valern. “and you allowed them to set back humanity’s chances at brokering the prestige of having a Spectre for at least the next fifty years.”

Goyle swallowed thickly, unclenched her teeth, and tried to speak without letting the anger shake through her voice.

“I underestimated the foresight of the council,” she admitted. It was true. She hadn’t expected they were paying enough attention to human affairs to put such thought as they had into how best to answer her demands. “But if anything, I’ve assured humanity’s continued dealings with the council. They know we’re capable of affecting their plans. Some patience is warranted, I think.”

Udina laughed, a short, hard, humorless sound, “Patience? We were on the brink of earning a seat at the right hand of the council, and now we are the bunglers of Sidon, the laughing stock of the galaxy.”

Goyle shook her head, “They think they’ve put us in our place, but it’s still more consideration than a lot of species get. Even the volus don’t have our pull, and the turians rely on them to keep their economy running.”

“I will not be satisfied with playing pet to the council,” Udina sneered. “We deserve a seat on that board, and we will have it—” he paused, a weakly predatory smile stretching over his teeth—“now that we have an ambassador who is properly concerned with humanity’s interests in the galaxy.”

Goyle chuckled at this. The finger that Udina still had pointed at her through the flickering yellow holo went a bit flaccid.

“You’re not going to get very far with the council if you’re so obviously looking out only for humanity,” she told him, torso still vibrating with mirth. “You assume that they care what we think of them and their motives. They don’t. Categorically. And they will play your obviously human-centric thought against you just like they did with mine.”

She paused, considering. Udina’s wrinkly forehead pulled downward. It made his face look even more angular, the lines sloping down toward his nose. He really was a piece of work. But her love of humanity was greater than her disapproval of Udina.

“Don’t make my mistakes, Donnel,” she said, voice low and almost threatening. “Learn from them. Work _with_ the council instead of against them. Make it impossible for them to refuse humanity a leadership role in this government.”

Udina’s brow unknotted into its usual lines of wisdomless age, his face slack suddenly as his balance was thrown by her words. He tightened the noose around his bearing quickly, though.

“I believe the time for your input has passed, Anita,” he said. “After this salarian _anomaly_ , who’s next?”

Goyle shook her head but keyed a new command into her Omnitool. If Udina didn’t want to listen to her advice, at least she could arm him with as much information as she could.

“This is Councilor Sparatus,” she told him. The salarian holo flickered into a slightly taller turian one. “He takes the turians’ role as the military arm of the council very personally. Don’t expect him to go against the other two, if evidence is ambiguous.”

“Weak-minded like most turians, then,” Udina added. “Content to obey his betters unquestioningly. A bureaucrat among those warbirds.”

“Yes, well, in any case, Sparatus isn’t the biggest problem anyway,” she retorted, bringing up her final holo, this one of an asari. “This is councilor Tevos. She is an asari matriarch, and the longest-serving member currently sitting on the council.”

“Matriarch?” Udina asked, the curiosity in his voice poorly masked behind falsified indifference.

“Asari go through three life phases, and matriarchy is the last of them. It means she’s very old. Older than human spaceflight, in fact. She’s had centuries to learn how to navigate political arenas, and she is most definitely the leader here. The other two might not admit it, but the asari run the council. Tevos knows that better than anyone, and she will use that power to further asari interests before and, if needed, instead of the greater galactic good.”

She stared at the image of councilor Tevos. Udina said something after a bit, but his voice seemed far away and muffled. This asari was the reason Anita Goyle was now out of a job. Cunning, manipulative, and experienced.

She had more than a few doubts that Udina would fare much better than she had.


	3. Watch the Queen Conquer

"Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women."  
Groucho Marx

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Red light, fazing and dim, stretched down the alleyway. Steam hissed from cobbled-together vents overhead, bathing the space in warm, uncomfortable moisture. It was never quiet on Omega, least of all in these kinds of cramped backstreets. Heavy gasses bumped their way through the pipes lining the walls, condensation dripping into splotchy puddles below.

These backstreets are the arteries of Omega, pumping its lifeblood of murder and scheming into its heart.

An unlikely pair stood at the end of the alley, conversing. A batarian in reddish armor with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. At his front, an asari in a bodysuit that seemed suctioned to her body. She leaned, against the back wall, hands splayed against the warm metal. The batarian talked animatedly, using his hands and hips in aggressive demonstration. Each time he turned to regard her again, his head tilted sharply to the left. The asari smiled to notice this.

“They’re late,” she interrupted the batarian’s recitation of his latest conquest. She knew the story anyway – knew the dancer he praised personally, in fact. “Isn’t that a little cliché?”

The batarian laughed. The asari smiled, fond of the way batarian voices always sounded like drowning coughs.

“Don’t worry, they’re coming. They wouldn’t dare skip out on this. Especially after you found that new dextro paste for the club.”

“Better than finding rocks to swallow, anyway,” she agreed.

The sound of armor scraping against concrete drew their attention from each other. The asari pushed off the wall, coming to stand in front of her batarian companion and crossing her arms over her chest. The batarian drew his rifle from its holster.

“We found the stuff on him yesterday,” he supplied as the source of the noise approached them. Two turians held a third up for her review. His clothes hung in scraps from his carapace. Fresh blood slipped through fresh wounds across his body. His face was bloodied too, his left eye swollen shut and oozing what looked like a mix of blood and yellow gunk. He would probably lose it, the asari thought.

“Is he even cognizant? I told you I needed him lucid,” she addressed the two flanking him, eyes piercingly focused. Unimpressed annoyance flared from her tongue.

“He got a bit crazy last night,” one of the turians explained hurriedly. “We had to put him down pretty hard.”

“We think he’s been sampling his own,” the batarian supplied.

“There were three of you,” she retorted. Said three exchanged worried looks. Her tone was dangerous. “Three of you couldn’t take one petty smuggler without ripping off half his face? And what the _fuck_ did you hit him with? That infection looks weeks old.”

“Toxic rounds,” the other of the turians answered smartly. “Stop organics in their tracks.”

The asari shook her head, pinched the bridge of her nose between the index finger and thumb of her right hand.

“Next time hit him in the damn leg,” she groused. Nothing to be done for it now, but the anger rolled off of her just the same. Like electricity. “In three cycles, I’m going to need you idiots to follow instructions a _little_ better than this.”

She knelt down to inspect the injured turian more closely. The infection _smelled_ weeks old, too, an unpleasant mixture of sweet and sharp. The flesh around his eye was rotting off. The round must have impacted just left of the eye. A deep, black mark stood there, the center of the rot. Dark purple smeared with yellow and blue radiated outward from there, swollen skin covered in pus and blood. Tiny pustules bulged across its radius, some already broken and oozing that yellow gunk.

“You are a sight,” she mused. She dragged a single gloved finger through the worst of the infection. The turian moaned in pain, the sound echoing harshly down the length of the alley. A vorcha sleeping at its mouth jerked awake at the commotion. He slunk away quietly, hoping to avoid notice. The asari watched him go from her periphery, holding in a satisfied smile.

A gossipy witness was just what this situation called for.

“Can you speak?” she turned her attention back to the turian before her.

He made a sound halfway between a gurgle and a groan. Wet, like there’s fluid in his lungs. For all she knew, there might be.

“Just listen, then,” the asari said. She took his chin gently, tilting his head until his good eye could focus on her face.

“A week from now you’ll be back in your dusty little hole. Probably down an eye, and only that, if you’re lucky. Your customer base will wither and shrivel, flaking off like dead skin. You will be hungry, and desperate. Eventually you might seek help. From the vorcha, from the elcor, maybe. They might even give it to you. But they’ll ask you a question, first, because they always want to know. They’ll ask you how the red sand connection for half of Omega ended up begging in the backstreets. How he lost an eye. Do you know what you’re going to tell them?”

The turian’s one unscathed, beady eye flitted between her two. He made a noise that pitched up at the end, a plea for the right answer.

The asari smiled at the fear spasming from his one wildly contracting pupil.

“You’re going to tell them that you broke a very simple rule. Don’t _fuck_ with Aria.”


	4. Raising a Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit longer than the others! I don’t think it will be the norm, but enjoy the extra length anyway, friends.
> 
> Rating: SFW
> 
> Words: 2,311

 ***********

“They’re ready for you now, maiden T’Soni.”

A lancet of something not quite fear pricked through her scalp. It settled as resolve in her chest.

She rose slowly, measuring the unbending of her hips to make the movement graceful. She pressed her palms flat to her stomach, pushing in and down to ripple out the small wrinkles the fabric of her dress retained.

“Thank you, matron,” she said, smiling at the asari seated behind the desk as she passed. The matron’s professional veneer cracked, and she cast a furtive glance to the closed white metal doors next to them before returning the smile with a secretive twist of her own mouth.

“Give ‘em hell, kid.”

“I will try,” she promised.

 ***********

Hell was about right. The vaulted room was somehow stifling, humid and uncomfortable. Her footsteps echoed off the shadowed white walls like heralds.

In another circumstance, she might have found the stark contrasts of the room quite beautiful – or at least less uninviting. This was the oldest building on campus, and the proud arches of the hall’s great windows stood as proof of its origins. It had been built in a grander time, before the asari had discovered spaceflight and looked to the vast expanse of space to prove their mastery. Grand temples like this one, with its high, white walls dotted uniformly with the selfsame windows standing at its end, were rare in the more modern parts of Thessia.

White marble floors caught the gleam from the setting sun at an angle. The plaques of light slanted backwards toward the entrance, pointing at her every step like the barbed edges of a pit. Or the teeth of a rabid varren.

She walked down the gullet of the beast, eyes caged forward, intent on her audience of auditors. Five figures seated with the setting sun like fire at their backs, casting oblong shadows that encroached upon the space reserved for the one empty space before them. She crossed the threshold of their reach, standing clocktower straight and waiting. Patient – unperturbed.

“Maiden T’Soni,” the middle figure addressed her, voice lilting down towards condescension. “You come before this panel to defend the culminating work of your time here as a doctoral candidate. What is your subject matter?”

“Let the child sit down, Ilria, before you begin your badgering,” this voice was familiar, warm, and welcome in this room of shadows and almost-reached potential. Her advisor, seated at the far right end of the table. The middle figure turned her head toward the intrusion of casual speech, her profile harshly outlined by the sun behind her.

“May I remind you, matriarch, that you are present at this proceeding as a guest, and have no sway over the way in which it is conducted?” she hesitated briefly – not so briefly that her audience did not notice. “You may, however, sit, maiden T’Soni.”

She did, shifting in a vain effort to knead some softness into the silky, hard wood. Finding no position was of particularly good use in this endeavor, she pinned her shoulders square and back, folding her hands on her lap and her ankles beneath her skirts.

If not comfortable, she would be solid before them.

“Now that everyone is adequately _settled_ ,” the middle speaker resumed, “we can get underway. Maiden T’Soni, please give the panel a brief synopsis of your work before I open the floor for challenges.”

“Thank you, matriarch,” she clenched her legs together to stop the fidget coiling in them at the renewed attention the panel afforded her. “My research concerns the Protheans, a now-extinct race that once expanded to rule most of the galaxy.”

“What good comes to the Republics with this work?” the second member from the left asked. It was a question she had anticipated.

“The Protheans were once the dominant sapient species in the universe, and though they were never as widespread as we have become, it is clear that they considered themselves the leaders of their time. We fill a similar role now as founders of the galaxy’s government and the gatekeepers of its peace. And that is saying nothing of the technology they left behind. The galactic government could not function without the mass relays or the Citadel, and all evidence points to their origin as distinctly Prothean.”

“We’re aware of what they left for us, but that’s precisely the problem,” another of the panel accused. “What is _new_ about your work? What have you found that hasn’t been republished a thousand times already.”

This question was more difficult because her best answer was unscientific.

“The beacons,” she said. “The beacons are what set my work apart. They are not religious icons or shrines. They are not revered, like much of the previous literature on the Protheans suggests. And they are very recent. I believe they were built just before the Protheans disappeared altogether. They may be the keys to discovering why an entire race of highly advanced beings vanished as suddenly as they did.”

A quick rustle indicated one of the panel flipping through papers: notes, maybe. Overhead lights flickered on above them as the sun sank lower in the windows at the panel’s back. The shadows stretching out towards the solitary seat in front of them diffused around their sources, their reach shrinking.

She could see their faces more clearly now. Her advisor, hawkeyed and tall, sat back in her chair at the far left end. To the right of her sat Matriarch Ezria, a professor in the Ancient Linguistics department. She was especially interested in the languages of pre-spaceflight cultures; the prospect of the highly-advanced Protheans probably did little to get her academic palms any kind of sweaty. But she was a department head, and so was in attendance, leaning forward with her chin propped at a slant in her hand, looking close to comatose with boredom.

At the opposite end were Matriarchs Ozra and Shalira, heads of the History and Asari Culture departments, respectively. Ozra she had never met in person, but she _had_ met a third-year undergraduate who knew Ozra personally and was more than willing to gossip after Liara had offered her services as editor for some of her more challenging papers. Ozra valued concrete evidence over implication: the mark distinguishing a historian from an archaeologist.

Shalira was easier to figure: her range was as narrow as Liara’s even if its focus was different. She hoped the department head would appreciate the narrow scope of her dissertation, having gleaned from a reading of Shalira’s own papers that she preferred to conduct her research on minute details rather than large, overarching phenomena. She was perhaps the member of the panel most likely to vote in Liara’s favor from the outset. The same could not be said for the fifth member of the board.

Matriarch Ilria sat in the panel’s middle seat: head of the Archaeology department and so also of the panel, sitting stock straight, smile shining like a guillotine.

The rustling panel member finally spoke.

“There appears to be no concrete evidence to that effect in your dissertation, maiden. Ours is not a business of blind conjecture.”

“It is not blind conjecture,” she shook her head. “It is a logical conclusion drawn from years of research. I do not know exactly what purpose these beacons served – mostly because one has not yet been found in working order – but I _am_ convinced they have something to do with how the Protheans vanished. Civilizations do not build countless, essentially identical monuments across their sphere of influence, almost simultaneously, without reason. Given the apparent time frame of the beacons’ construction in relation to the end of the Prothean era, the logical conclusion is that the two events are related somehow.”

“So where do you see your work going from here?” the head panelist asked, almost before the last words were out of her mouth. “Since, as you put it, there is no way to prove your theory without a working Prothean beacon, you seem to be at a substantial roadblock.”

“An insurmountable one, even,” another offered, to a murmur of support from the others.

This was not the first time that those in her field had questioned the feasibility of her research. She doubted very much that this would be the last, either.

Such attitudes had ceased to deter her long ago.

“I doubt very much that the entirety of the Prothean empire has been excavated and examined,” she allowed herself a small smile. Some of the panel shifted in their seats, something that did not escape her notice.

They seemed less grand now in the white light bathing them from above: less the teeth of the beast they had seemed before, and more like the old scholars they were. Formidable in their own right, perhaps, but she knew their game.

And she was better at it than they.

“If a working beacon exists – and their prevalence across the sites I _have_ included suggests this is _very_ likely – then all I need do is find it. A task I intend to dedicate my academic career to accomplishing.”

Ezria jerked her chin up from her hand.

“Would that mean you would ask to leave immediately to continue your research?” she demanded, catching a glare from Ilria for her sudden exclamation and amending thereafter: “Assuming the panel votes to grant you your degree, of course.”

Despite the shower of annoyance Ilria continued to spray at her colleague, Liara was pleased. Like krogan to ryncol, right into her trap.

“I know it is customary for new doctors to remain at the university to teach,” she mused, tilting her head and looking for all the world as though her next thought had not occurred to her before now, “but I cannot say I would turn down the opportunity to continue my research instead.”

This was true for more reasons than one. Thessia would always be her home – just one she could handle spending the next two centuries very far away from.

“If there are no more _questions_ ,” Ilria groused, staring pointedly at Ezria as she hissed the last word. The other matriarch arched her brow in response. Liara was unsure of what to make of that exchange – Ezria’s reaction was almost challenging in appearance, as if she was daring Ilria to say something they both knew she would not. She spoke again before Liara could contemplate the matter further, “I will open the voting portion of this proceeding. Matriarch Ezria, we will begin with you. How do you vote?”

“It’s a yes from me,” Ezria stared back into Ilria’s eyes for a moment before turning to Liara to continue. “You’ve done the work and there are still new places to take this research. Well done, Maiden T’Soni.”

“Very well,” Ilria snapped her head to her left. “Matriarch Shalira, your vote?”

Shalira had been silent for much of the proceedings. Liara held her breath and dug her fingertips into her thighs to stop them trembling.

“A yes from me as well,” Shalira said, voice soft and deadpan. “Your dissertation is pleasantly focused and thorough. I look forward to seeing where your future research takes you.”

Liara nodded her thanks. Matriarch Ilria let loose a dismissive gargle from the back of her throat. One more vote in the affirmative and she wouldn’t have the power to deny Liara her doctorate.

“Matriarch Ozra?” she asked, voice pointed sharp and thrusting like a lance in her colleague’s direction. Ozra, to her credit, did not regard Ilria as the others had, choosing instead to direct her gaze down to Liara.

“I have been tenured at this university for quite a while, maiden T’Soni. Longer than you have been alive,” she said. Liara nodded, unsure if the comparison was meant as praise or admonishment. Ozra continued, “I have yet to come upon a path of research I find more important to the asari than the investigation of the Prothean extinction. My vote is for you to receive your doctorate, and for you to continue your research immediately.”

The speech seemed to bore a new emptiness into her chest, as though a stone had been removed from the cavity. Air whooshed out of her lungs more audibly than she intended, but she flexed her hands into fists in her lap to keep her shoulders from shaking with the breath.

“Very well,” matriarch Ilria said, reluctance dripping from her lips with the words, along with something like disappointment. Apprehension? Liara found she did not, in that moment, particularly care. Ilria couldn’t stop her now. “Maiden T’Soni, this panel finds your dissertation worthy of approval, and hereby grants you the title of Doctor of Archaeology. May your future endeavors bring benefit to the republics and to your name.”

“Thank you, matriarchs,” Liara responded, her voice emerging from her mouth full and confident, contrary to the elated, almost nervous throbbing of her heart.

“You are dismissed, doctor,” Ilria bit her way through the sentence, leaving it full of venom.

Liara ignored the poison in the words. She was dismissed, and happy to be. She rose slowly, chin high as she regarded the panel for the last time. Her advisor caught her eye, grinning like a fool, or like a child. Liara allowed herself a small, modest smile in response.

Then she turned her back on the committee and walked back towards the entrance of the hall, strides growing in length and surety the farther she took herself from the solitary chair. The arched windows no longer spiked the room into a toothy mouth with shadowy fangs. Instead, the fluorescent lights bathed her walk like sunshine, like stage lighting. As she approached the great doors at the end of the hall, she allowed herself a wider, freer smile.

Her head was full of celebration, her inner voice singing to her of her own name: Dr. Liara T’Soni.


End file.
